The Canadian Technician

About the author:Greg Schnell, CMT, is a Senior Technical Analyst at StockCharts.com specializing in intermarket and commodities analysis.
Based in Calgary, he is a board member of the Canadian Society of Technical Analysts (CSTA) and the chairman of the CSTA Calgary chapter.
He is also the author of Stock Charts for Dummies (Wiley, 2018).
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Latest Posts

The last two weeks has seen a huge surge in the Canadian Technology sector. These stocks have ripped to the upside.
Here is a list of the technology stocks in order of SCTR strength.
The Industrials are still doing well. One concern is the break in PPO momentum. At this point it is wait and see.
The charts that seems to be lining up for some drama is Gold and the Gold miners. The Full Stochastics is starting to bounce off the 20 level. Price continues to hold at support here. The nice part about considering a position in gold miners here is
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Canada has not been in the big bull market the USA had going earlier this year. After a big pullback in the USA and Canada, we are watching the height of the bounce to see if Canada can get back into the bullish camp.
Currently the $TSX has bounced up and stalled at the area of resistance that has been in place for four years. However, there are broader concerns. The RSI indicator shown in the top panel bounced down to 30. A bear market indication occurs when the weekly RSI gets down to 30.
Canadian breadth is poor but above dismal. Breadth is defined as the number of
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The Canadian charts have been getting weak for a while. The last two webinars pointed to declining strength in the Canadian market. The breakdown in the last two weeks just accelerated the downward trend, it didn't start it.
The financial sector really needs to rebound soon to not break the uptrend in momentum shown on the PPO chart.
The energy sector is abysmal. The RSI is in bear market mode. The energy sector is near if not at 2-year lows. That was sudden. The 8-month uptrend on the PPO is breaking down at or near zero. That is just terrible. It is
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The Canadian market broke down and went negative for the year this week. The $TSX made its closing high on January 4th and has receded since then. The scale is in percentage terms from the last day of December 2017.
So this is not great. What is more alarming is the detail on some of the individual sectors.
Starting with Technology, things look ok and the momentum indicators are still pointing positive. Should the trend line on the MACD break, that would be worrisome. The current lower high on the MACD compared with the June 2017 high is an uncomfortable
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We have seen roughly one day a week of slight downward pressure in the US markets during this huge rally. So the little bit of selling this morning is hardly cause for alarm. The Dow was up 1897 points this month when it closed on Friday. Can it do 2000 points before Wednesday? That's a nice month!!!!!
But this blog is mostly about the Canadian market and how it fits with the other global markets. The local news is not so pretty.
Let me start by showing a chart of the $TSX and the $SPX off the 2009 lows.
The Canadian market has dramatically
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The Canadian market ($TSX) has been flat for the month. With a small burst in the first few days, the Canadian market is now only up 0.5%. That compares with the $SPX at 3.85% and the $NDX at 5.33%. While Canadians felt some relief by some rising resource stocks, they were still outperformed massively by the US markets.
One of the bright industry spots in the market still appears to be Gold mining. The XGD.TO opened lower today and rallied up to close back in the range of Monday. The zoom box on the right shows this.
Natural Gas
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Many stocks are up 100% or more
Most have seen dramatic volume surges
For Canada, Marijuana within the Healthcare Sector has been one of the single biggest performers over the last month. Let's review what is going on here.
The last month shown on the first table has seen spectacular gains. The Percentage Change column is remarkable.
The Marijuana stocks have had a wild week. This is a one-week table below. One was up 24%, some were down 30%.
Today, it was cautionary.
A lot of these stocks do not have an SCTR ranking. Most
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This weeks Canadian Technician Video Recording 2018-01-02 has lots of information on Healthcare. As a sector that is moving to the upside, it looks timely. There is also information on the merger between Potash Corp and Agrium.
Canadian Technician Recording With Greg Schnell 2018-01-02 from StockCharts.com on Vimeo.
I also recorded a video for quickly making chartlists with specific industry groups or sectors.
Greg Schnell Quick Tip - Industry Group Chartlists from StockCharts.com on Vimeo.
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This recording includes some specific questions for Utilities and Consumer Staples. It also highlights some of the growth areas for 2018.
Canadian Technician Recording with Greg Schnell 2017-12-19 from StockCharts.com on Vimeo.
Good trading,
Greg Schnell, CMT, MFTA
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The gold mining area is pretty interesting this week. While gold gets sold off every morning just before the stock markets open, it feels bad. Gold was down $34 on the week. Ouch, that's bearish! Still a pullback in the uptrend on a weekly chart, but it did make 4-month lows.
Copper also had a lousy week. The current conduit dropped 3.69%. This is similar chart formation to the Shanghai Index which also pulled back this week. A pullback within an uptrend.
So with the underlying metals pulling back, its no surprise the miners might pull back. But some
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